Project R-12642

Process Mining and Anomaly Detection in Financial Auditing (Research)

Companies and organizations are organized around processes to increase efficiency and mitigate risks at the same time. The financial auditor, who needs to provide assurance that the reported financial statements are in line with reality, has a keen interest in these processes. Since business processes are not always strictly followed, the auditor needs to understand why employees deviated from the expected procedures. The goal of this research is to develop methods to identify which deviations warrant further investigations and which ones are benign. The study will be conducted according the design science research methodology. Consequently, it will include the distinct phases of problem identification, solution design, verification and validation. Challenges associated with process analysis during the auditing engagement shall be determined during the first stage. The identified challenges can then be used to design solutions. Finally, the developed solutions shall be tested either in a real-world scenario or a simulated environment. The field of process mining in the context of financial auditing is still a novel field. The results of this research can play a vital role in audit analytics. Audit practitioners should be able to use the outcome of this research in their operations. Furthermore, future researchers shall be able to build upon the knowledge produced by this research and devise additional work in the field of process mining for auditing.

01 February 2022 - 31 January 2026